


Building Circuits

by Agf



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Android Avengers, Android Clint Barton, Android Natasha Romanov, Android Steve Rogers, Characters to be added, Deaf Clint Barton, Human Bruce Banner, Human Tony, Humor, Hydra (Marvel), Team, Team Bonding, teamfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-07-04 13:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15842034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agf/pseuds/Agf
Summary: So, someone's released murderous androids on the world and jump-started the apocalypse. That's fine, whatever. Tony has his workshop anyway and he can handle being totally alone in this hellscape, no issue. (Except it's awful, and he hates it.)Then an android called Natasha shows up, and it turns out his reputation precedes him.“Engineer,” the android said.Tony paused. “What?”“Engineer,” it repeated. “I am broken.”





	1. Natasha

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for team fics and apocalypse AUs. This was pretty much inevitable.

Tony found Natasha first.

Or rather, she found him.

When everything had gone to hell, he’d turned his workshop into a kind of bunker – with all his kit, whatever food supplies he could grab, and a haphazard pile of clothes. Really it didn’t look all that different to normal, despite the carnage happening outside. Tony had gotten used to sleeping in here years ago, and he had running water and a few creature comforts. Plus, he was underground and safe. Even if he was going mad with only himself to talk to. Things could be much worse.

Scratch that safe thing, Tony mentally amended as the metal doors of the lab groaned and crumpled at the edges. Definitely not as safe as he’d hoped.

He grabbed the handheld weapon he’d been developing, folding his fingers into the casing and flexing them, then raising his palm to the doors. By now the gap was big enough for the person to slip through sideways.

No, not person – no person was that strong. This was an android.

“I wouldn’t come any closer,” Tony warned. He took aim. “I haven’t tested this thing much, but it’s got enough of a blast to fry some wiring.”

The android straightened up. Even from a distance, Tony could see that it was broken. Loose wires tumbled from the space where the shoulder should be on one side, and half of the midriff was missing, exposing circuitry and the steady drip of an oil leak.

Still, its eyes were trained on him. Intelligent and green, lit up from the inside with that distinctive android glow. Tony raised his hand again.

“Really would rather not risk shattering my arm firing this thing,” he said conversationally. The android took a step closer. Tony cursed under his breath and charged the repulsor.

“Engineer,” the android said.

Tony paused. “What?”

“Engineer,” it repeated. “I am broken.”

Tony lowered his arm a fraction. This was new. Androids didn’t tend to be particularly interested in conversation – so far, any of the ones he’d seen while on his limited supply runs had been far more of the ‘shoot first, talk later’ variety.

“You are,” Tony agreed cautiously. “I mean- yeah, look at you. Took a solid hit or two, I’d say. Probably losing a fair bit of power with that leak, and that arm is a fire risk if ever I’ve seen one, and I have seen a _lot_ , okay, I used to freak my butler out something terrible--”

“ _Engineer_ ,” the android repeated, and, Jesus- Tony hadn’t realised it was possible for them to sound exasperated. “You can fix me.”

There was a beat of silence. Tony was absently aware that he was gaping. The android didn’t make another move, just stood in the doorway, dripping onto the floor. Tony had about a thousand questions – about how it had found him, how it had known, why it would even risk the journey here instead of reporting back to base for repairs.

Only one question seemed to matter, for now.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Natasha,” the android replied, the slightest of twists to her mouth, like she didn’t like to reveal it.

Okay – maybe two questions.

“Are you going to kill me, Natasha?” Tony asked. He was already pulling his hand from the glove.

“Can’t,” Natasha replied, using the arm that was still attached to gesture at her broken side. Then she added, “Won’t. Not here for that.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Tony sighed, and jumped up to get a better look at her.

****

“I’ll be quick. A couple hours, tops. Don’t touch anything that you might break,” Tony listed off from the doorway, backpack slung over his shoulder and repulsor glove firmly on. From his workbench, Natasha glowered at him.

She was really very expressive. Much more than Tony had seen on any other android. He had been developing a theory, over the hours spent figuring out how her body was crafted together, that if he were to get a look inside her head, he’d find something different than was in the majority of those killing machines outside.

“Do not do anything stupid,” Natasha said. She had tried to come with him, at first. It had been an hour of arguing before Tony had won his independence. She had only backed down when he pointed out that he could move faster than her, at the minute. He didn’t plan to fight, only run.

“I feel like I should be offended that you’ve only known me for what- five hours?” Tony glanced up at the clock on the wall. “And you already feel like it’s necessary to say that. Really, Natasha, I’m hurt.” Tony clasped a hand dramatically over his chest.

Natasha simply watched with a blank expression.

“Okay, fine, I promise. Nothing stupid. Won’t be long.” Tony adjusted his backpack. “One arm, coming right up,” he muttered as he left, barely taking a moment to question how sensible it was to be leaving his home in the hands of an android. But Natasha wouldn’t hurt him, he was quite sure of that. She’d had plenty of time to do that when he had his hands tangled up in her cooling system.

She didn't talk much, not as much as he did, but Natasha had been happy to answer some of his questions. She still hadn't explained why she had come to him, though. Only insisted that she wouldn't hurt him, and that she knew he could help. 

Both of those were equally interesting. Tony had been a pretty famous weapons inventor, sure, but androids didn't care about that kind of thing. They _were_ the advanced weaponry. And Natasha wasn't asking for weapons, she was asking to be fixed. Somehow, she had both decided she didn't want to report back, and then found Tony as a suitable replacement for help. 

Very interesting.

Outside, Tony discovered that it was night. He didn’t pay enough attention to that clock, and once you got into the habit of letting hours drift by in a creative haze it didn’t matter much if you ended up nocturnal. It wasn’t like there was anyone to be annoyed at him over it – communications systems were still down everywhere, no matter how many times he’d tried to orchestrate a patch.

The space around what had used to be his building was… deserted. A lot of it was rubble now, anyway. That was a good thing, it meant that whoever had decided that the Stark house needed to be destroyed probably thought they’d got him in it. Tony peeled himself from the shadows by the wall and set off in the direction of population.

Every time he had to come out, scrounging for food and parts, Tony was reminded how lucky he’d been to survive the initial push. Or how unlucky, he supposed, edging his way around the remains of a fight, it depended how you looked at it.

He didn’t have to go much further before he found a pile of broken android parts. Mostly people dumped the broken bodies, pulling out the guns if they could find them. Most people didn’t know what to do with the parts.

Tony shifted through the pile, humming to himself. There was an arm here, yes, but it was big and beefier than Natasha’s other one. It would probably unbalance her. He put it in his backpack regardless.

“Anything else for me?” he asked the pile, only scuttling backwards when he unearthed a face plate, his glove raised.

The android’s eyes were dimmed. It was inactive, not connected to anything. If he got a good look at it, he could probably learn more about them, peel inside the brain compartment and poke around.

Tony left it where it was.

Just an arm. That’s all he was here for. He kept moving.

There were a few other useful things he found along the way. There was movement inside the supermarket, so he didn’t go in there, but he found a smashed laptop by the back of the building and added it to his pack. Another few clumps of wiring, too.

Tony had been searching for about an hour when he found the… altar. It was human-made, that was for sure. Made from a pile of android parts about waist high, the face plates all turned outwards along the bottom, propped between candles. The whole thing screamed _crazy_ , and Tony looked around for a good few minutes before he moved to get a closer look.

Whoever had made it, it hadn’t done much to keep them safe. Tony couldn’t be sure if they were hoping it would scare the androids away or call them closer, but a man was laying in pieces beside the pile. So, it had either worked or it hadn’t.

Tony swallowed against the scent of iron, and tore his eyes away. An arm. He only needed an arm.

He pushed his hands into the pile, looking over his shoulder as he moved pieces out of the way, pulling when he bumped up against fingers.

He yanked the arm out, breathing hard. It was still attached to a shoulder-piece, but that was fine. He could pull that off. Tony hastily yanked his bag open, and stuffed it inside.

He had to remind himself that running would only attract attention. It was too loud, better to walk.

The closer he got to home, the louder his heart pounded uncomfortably against his ribcage. Every time he blinked he could see that broken body, the blood gone rust-brown around it. The wounds which could only have been made by metal fingers, tearing and pulling cruelly.

Tony practically fell through the door to his workshop, breathing hard. Inside, Natasha sat up on the workbench, frowning at him.

“Someone is coming?” she asked. Her voice made Tony jump.

“Shit- no, no. Only me. Just… give me a moment,” he said. He breathed in the familiar smell of his workshop, the oil and metal, the faint lingering of coffee. (That was the hardest to ration).

“Okay. I found you something,” Tony said once he felt steadier. He emptied out his backpack, and propped the too-big arm up in the corner. He held the better one up in his hands and brought it over to the workbench. Like his own kind of offering.

Natasha held out her good hand for it. “This looks good,” she said, pleased. “You can fit it?”

“I can,” Tony nodded. “It’ll take some time, though. I’ll have to make sure I link everything together right, or you won’t be able to use it.”

“You can do it,” Natasha nodded decisively. She lay back down on the workbench, offering up her torn side like it was nothing, although Tony could see her eyes still trained steadily on him. “You are the engineer.”

“Still just Tony,” Tony replied, but he nodded. Yeah, he could do this. Totally fine. Fun, even. “Okay. Might be weird for you to watch,” he warned, pulling out a pair of pliers and his soldering kit.

Natasha considered this for a few moments, and then nodded, and closed her eyes. Weirdly, Tony felt like he could actually hear the words implied in that gesture. The _I trust you_ unspoken, yet still echoing in the workshop.

****

Four hours later, Natasha had a new arm.

Tony sat back, wiped his forehead, and slumped in his seat. “Test it,” he said.

Natasha curled and uncurled her fingers. Then she pulled a face, and the plates shifted against one another, revealing a hidden compartment where a weapon would usually sit. It was empty, but she nodded and rolled her shoulder happily enough.

Tony yawned, and let his head fall forwards onto the bench. If Natasha wanted to kill him now she had two arms, he was so tired he might even let her.

“Better?” he asked, words muffled against the metal.

“I need to go,” Natasha said. She sat up and dropped from the workbench, flexing her new arm with a pleased expression.

Tony looked up, suddenly awake again. “Hey- what do you mean? That’s it, you’re going, just like that?”

He knew he sounded desperate. Hurt. He didn’t care.

“You cannot stop me from leaving,” Natasha said, turning her glowing eyes on him. Tony concentrated hard on not breaking that stare.

“I can’t,” he said, dipping his chin. “You want to go, you can go. You really were just using me for my body, though, huh? I see how it is, Nat. I just figured we were building a beautiful friendship here.”

“I need to go,” Natasha repeated. She reached out a hand towards Tony, but paused in place when he flinched. Something twisted itself in her expression, and she dropped her arm. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said.

Tony only nodded. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He watched Natasha walk purposefully towards the door, slipping through the gap she had created, before she pushed the doors closed from the other side.

Silence in the workshop again. Tony sat down heavily on his cot, and flipped a screwdriver over a few times in his hand. Then he lay down, pulled a blanket over his face, and tried to get some sleep.

****

It could have only been a few hours later when Natasha reappeared in his doorway. And, no, thank you, Tony was not emotional about that. The lights were bright outside, and he’d just woken up, that was all.

“Natasha?” he sat up on his cot, rubbing his eyes and grinning. “I knew you couldn’t stay away from my charms for long! What… what do you have there?”

“Engineer!”

“I told you to call me Tony,” Tony grumbled. But he was already on his feet. Natasha was bent low, her back to him as she fought to pull something in through the door.

“Hey, wait, let me help,” Tony said. He came closer, and realised that the thing in Natasha’s hands was a foot. Connected to a leg. Tony keyed the doors to open wider without thinking.

Laying on the floor, letting itself be pulled along but with a weapons system very definitely up and running and _pointing at Tony’s face_ , was another android.

“Natasha?” Tony asked, lifting his hands into the surrender position. She continued to pull the guy further inside, mindless of the gun literally trained on her delicate human companion. The android on the floor glanced between Tony’s face, and Natasha’s.

“I figured it went without saying that you shouldn’t bring your murderous friends home,” Tony said. He glanced back at his workbench, where his really useful weapon was laying much too far away to be of any use.

Natasha finished pulling the android inside, and keyed the doors to close again.

“But hey, if it’s worth saying once it’s worth saying twice. I really like being alive, and here, and not being shot at by your comrades,” Tony continued. He was babbling, yes, but at least he still had full control of his faculties.

Finally, Natasha looked over at him, that exasperated expression back on her face. “This is Clint,” she said, nodding. "He is broken too." 


	2. Clint

“Clint,” Tony repeated. He looked down at the android on the ground. He hadn’t made any move to get up, and Tony realised that he probably couldn’t. Natasha was looking at him expectantly.

“You want me to fix Clint,” Tony inferred.

Natasha looked pleased. “Yes,” she said. She turned to Clint and made an impatient gesture with her hands, and the pointed arrow-style gun he was holding slid away into the right compartment on his arm. “I told you, he can fix you too,” she said. She kept making those gestures while she spoke, and Tony realised the android on the floor – Clint – was watching her hands just as much as her face.

“Can he hear us?” Tony asked Natasha.

“Not well,” Natasha replied.

“And move?”

“Not since yesterday.”

“When you got… de-armed,” Tony surmised. Natasha nodded. “Hey, just so I know – you have any other friends waiting outside?”

She grinned, completely unrepentant. “No. Only Clint.”

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face, and then went to clear some space. “Tell Clint that we need to move him onto the bench,” he requested.  

Clint allowed himself to be moved without pulling out his weapon, but the unimpressed gaze he kept levelled at Tony implied that he would not hesitate if Natasha changed her mind about the situation. Weirdly, that made Tony feel better about the whole thing.

Yeah, he had been alone for far too long.

The hinges along Clint’s side were new and hardly worn at all, still shiny, and his abdomen opened up onto his control panel with no stiffness. Tony located his favourite wrench, and got to exploring.

“There’s some damage in here, but it isn’t too bad,” he muttered to himself, vaguely aware of Natasha translating by his side. It made him pause, looking between them. They worked together well, had obviously been together when this damage had happened, and they were almost new. Different, too.

Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “You- If I fix Clint, you’re not going to go out there and… I don’t know, finish your original mission, are you?” he asked.

Natasha looked puzzled. “What mission?”

“You know. The apocalypse,” Tony mimed holding a gun at his own chest. Made the sound. “Pew pew. Dead people. Kill all humans.”

Natasha continued to look confused. On the bench, Clint made a motion with his hands.

“Is that an ‘oh god, he’s onto us’ kind of sign?” Tony asked curiously. He was still pretty sure Natasha wasn’t going to kill him, but it did occur to him that he probably ought to have checked she didn’t plan on killing anyone else before he equipped her with fun new limbs. “If Trigger-Happy here turns around and shoots me in the face once I’m sure he can walk again, I’m going to be really unhappy,” Tony added.

“I thought you said he was clever?” Clint asked, aloud.

Tony jumped.

“Fucking hell, you talk!” he clapped a hand over his chest. “Warn a guy, would you? I could have an underlying heart condition, you could have killed me.”

Clint rolled his eyes. Eerie green lights performing the most human of gestures. Really. Tony was even more confused than before.

Natasha was smirking.

“He is an idiot,” Clint pointed out, as if Tony couldn’t stick his hand straight into the gap where his stomach should be, and pull out some important looking wires.

A glance sideways at Natasha gave him the distinct impression she knew what he was thinking, and she didn’t approve.

“Natasha, tell him,” Tony said petulantly. “I gave you a new arm, didn’t I? If anything, my survival instinct has to prove I’m smart. Smart enough to have survived this far, huh?” Tony paused, weighing his options, then shrugged. Time to test a theory. “Smart enough to have triggered whatever sensors led you to me?”

It was Natasha’s turn to look surprised then, although she tried to hide it beneath that smooth, android exterior. Tony just looked smug.

There was silence for a few moments, and then Clint nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. Just fix me.”

Tony waited.

Almost like an afterthought, Clint added, “We aren’t going to kill any people.”

Again, Tony probably should have pressed that issue. Instead he just turned his attention to the mess of wires that made up Clint’s body, and began realigning all the dislodged relays.

****

As soon as he was all sealed up again, Clint stood up and bounced on his toes, nodding at Natasha like Tony had passed a test. Or perhaps performed an admirable stunt, like a monkey on a unicycle. He resisted the urge to bow, but only just.

“Hey- I’m not done yet,” Tony pointed out as Clint began to pull on his shirt again, covering all the seams and plating that made up his body.

“Feels like you’re done,” he said, but Natasha scowled and he sat back on the bench without argument. “What else is wrong?” Clint asked.

“You still can’t hear us,” Tony pointed out.

“I can hear a bit,” Clint argued.

“Don’t you want me to… I don’t know, sort that out?” Tony frowned, waving a screwdriver like a baton.

“Clint has always been this way,” Natasha said. “It’s not a wiring issue.”

Tony looked back at Clint, who shrugged. “Nat translates for me. I can hear enough,” he said. “Plus, I don’t want you to stick that in my head.”

Tony looked down at his screwdriver, imagined someone worming it between his own ears, and shuddered. “Fine by me,” he said.

He tried not to show it, but the hearing thing was really the last nail in coffin of the freaky android situation he was slowly dismantling in his workshop. Who designed an army of machines, and allowed for some of them to be so… inexplicably different? Natasha and Clint moved like people, had mannerisms that were pointless to program into a weapon. Their whole existence made no sense at all – they were too individual.

“Okay, I think we need to have a frank discussion,” Tony said, setting all his tools to one side. Two pairs of glowing eyes turned to focus on him, and yeah, it was going to take a little bit longer before that stopped being creepy. “Darlings, it’s not you, it’s me. Well, actually, it is sort of you, you’re--”

“Engineer, you never asked who broke us,” Natasha interrupted.

Tony paused, wet his lips. “I assumed it was people at first, fighting back,” he admitted. “Starting to think it might have been other androids.”

Natasha nodded. “Our creator,” she said. “We were experiments. We were broken.”

“Experiments in what way?” Tony asked.

“Our coding,” Clint replied. He had taken a seat, leaning back on Tony’s cot. He looked so human, with his legs sprawled out. Androids didn’t relax. They were either completing an action, or they stood still and silent, awaiting instruction. Clint and Natasha relaxed, but they were still androids.

Weren’t they?

Yes, yes. They were machines, just… advanced. Experiments. “They gave you too much free will,” Tony said. “Right? And you made a choice they didn’t like.”

“Hydra,” Natasha supplied, the sign for this word something twisted and ugly. “Actually, they made us smarter. To be better, once the need for brute strength has passed.”

“Their mistake,” Clint added.

“Better artificial intelligence, that’s what you’re saying?” Tony asked. His fingers itched to see what that might look like. He wanted so badly in that moment to hook up a screen and get studying.

Natasha’s features had gone slightly blank again, and Tony focused on not projecting that desire quite so obviously through his body language. He held his hands up in surrender.

“We were made to be intelligent, to teach ourselves,” Natasha continued after a moment. “We taught ourselves how to decide. We decided to leave.”

That there – that statement uttered so casually, it was a blow to everything Tony knew about androids. About how far their parameters could be altered. They shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves to ignore their primary purpose. It was impossible.

Clint was grinning at him.

Tony snapped his open mouth closed with a glare.

“I don’t feel embarrassed about finding that fascinating,” he said. Clint grinned wider, and sat back against the cot again.

“We knew you would,” he said. “That is why we searched for you.”

****

Two days later, they had established a kind of routine. Tony was still not entirely clear on why his workshop had been selected as the best base camp, but he wasn’t about to kick his guests out. For one, they were the company he had been craving since the very beginning. For two, Natasha had consented to let Tony get a glimpse into her head.

He had streams of code copied directly from her mainframe, and he had to teach himself how to read a lot of it. It was fun, though. The kind of challenge he relished.

While he studied, Natasha and Clint had silent conversations of their own. Tony had started to pick up a few of the signs – there was the one for his name, a twist of both thumbs into a box shape that seemed to work for both _Tony_ and _Engineer_ ; the one which meant Hydra, which involved curving all the fingers taut and pulsing them; and the one for sleep. That one was only ever directed at him, and Tony tended to ignore it.

“You don’t eat enough food,” Natasha commented on the third day. Tony was halfway through a dry saltine cracker, and he raised his eyebrows at her like she’d missed this. “Proper food,” she amended. “Humans need to eat proper food to maintain proper bodily function.”

Tony shrugged. “I don’t eat any worse than your average college student.”

“You don’t have enough food.” Natasha stood up. “We will get you some.”

Clint seemed on board with that plan, because he jumped up and began checking the weapon in his arm.

“Nope,” Tony argued, ignoring the dry crumbs that sprayed from his mouth. “It’s dangerous out there. I’m not malfunctioning. This is fine. I can go looking in a day or two. Probably even a week, if need be.”

Even Clint looked unimpressed. A part of Tony hysterically noted that it was a bit like standing in front of his parents, trying to explain the missing whiskey.

“I’m the engineer here, right?” Tony did the sign, pointing at himself. “I know what I’m talking about.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “You only know how to fix us. Not you.”

And that… yeah, okay. Tony was well aware Natasha was referring to the fact that he was a mechanic, not a biologist, but hell. There was something else true about that statement, and he’d paused long enough to give her the upper hand in their argument. They both knew it.

“If you hurt any people, while you’re gone, I’ll know and I’ll shut you out forever,” Tony promised. “And if you don’t come back at all I’ll… do the same.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, you mean,” Natasha smiled. “We’re good at recon. Our programming. We’ll be quick.” She nodded towards Tony’s computer screen. “Keep looking,” she said.

Tony glanced back at the code, and nodded. He felt like they had reached a silent understanding over this – that this code held the key to whatever had made Natasha and Clint so _human_. If he could find it, that would be a better weapon than any repulsor glove.

“You work on fixing us,” Clint said, and the way he said ‘us’ made it quite clear he wasn’t referring to just the two of them. “We’ll keep you from breaking.”

Tony glanced up again, trying and failing to hide a surprised little smile. Natasha opened the door, and gestured for Clint to follow her. Clint picked up the empty backpack, and stuck his head back in to add, “For now.”

He was smiling though, so Tony figured it was okay to laugh.


	3. 'Non-Altered Android'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The android they found at the gas station was huge. Like, one-and-a-half-Clint’s wide, huge. Football player huge. 
> 
> “Is anyone else getting an All-American kind of vibe?” Tony wondered aloud.

After Natasha and Clint’s third supply run, Tony sat them down on the sofa and revealed a notebook covered in scribbles.

“This is an intervention,” he announced. “I appreciate that you have assigned yourselves the role of Tony Stark’s personal shoppers – really, that’s very kind of you – but man cannot live on jars of pickles alone.”

Tony pointed at the notebook, where he had drawn a pie chart and labelled it with the various food groups.

“This tiny, tiny segment? This is the pickle segment,” he said, then he gestured to the pantry area. To the jars of green pickles that stood in proud stacks. Stacks, multiple. “This is what you have brought me.”

“There aren’t many options,” Natasha pointed out evenly. “And greens are good for you. Pickles are good for maintaining a healthy gut.”

“You are reciting that from the packet, don’t think I don’t know that,” Tony accused.

Clint smiled. “We also bought you fermented fish,” he said. There was a look in his green, glowing eyes that told Tony he knew exactly why Tony had yet to open that.

Tony bet the little shit had known before they even left that Tony wouldn’t eat it. He probably bought it back just to be difficult. “I will disconnect your vocal system next time you need me to help you, don’t think I won’t,” he threatened.

“Natasha would maim you in your sleep,” Clint replied. He folded his arms, looking smug.

Tony glanced at Natasha. She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “We were built as a pair,” she said.

“I cannot believe I provide you with shelter and oil and my expertise just to be treated in this way.”

“I’m sorry, I do not have access to a violin recital database,” Clint replied. He was pouting exaggeratedly.

Tony scowled, but it had reminded him of the other purpose for his impromptu lecture. He flipped a page in his notebook, and this one was covered in scribbles of code, listing up and down the page like Tony had been writing without looking at the paper. “I found another two sections of code that look altered,” he said.

The last lot he’d found had turned out to be inert. A sort-of coding loop that had generated sometime during Natasha’s learning process. When they’d hooked her back up to take another look at the live code, that section had disappeared. Natasha swore she hadn’t even realised she was doing it.

“What do these look like?” Natasha asked. It was strange, being faced with the inside of her own mind. It felt less concerning when it was laid out in Tony’s handwriting, though.

“As far as I can tell, this here refers to a kind of… risk assessment protocol?” Tony tried to explain. “It’s pretty standard to have one, I think- Have you ever heard of the trolley problem?”

Blank stares were his only answer.

“Uh, okay. It’s an ethical problem – the idea is that you’re driving a trolley, a kind of tram, and as you come up to a crossroads you can see that there’s four people stuck on the track up ahead. If you want, you can switch to the other track, but that one has one person stuck on it, too. So, what do you do?”

Tony waited, feeling like he could practically sense the machinery whirring in his companions’ heads.

“I would send Clint ahead to try and remove the single person obstruction while I attempt to derail the trolley,” Natasha replied.

Tony blinked. “That isn’t really one of the options,” he said.

What is was, though, was an excellent example of the code at work. Specifically _Natasha’s_ code, not a generic android code. Generic codes tended to be focused at following the least risky possibility. They would just hit the one man.

Although – standard android code might be to hit as many as possible, thinking about it.

“Okay. Now, imagine that the one person is… me. And the tram’s moving faster,” he suggested.

“We would move faster to compensate.”

“No time. You hit me or you hit four strangers. Only choice.”

Silence. Natasha curled her fingers into a loose fist, over and over. “I hit the four strangers,” she said tersely.

Tony nodded. He stamped down on the surprised little flare of happiness in his chest. He had to get it together – he’s a scientist, not a child who finally made a friend. “What if they were children?” he asked.

“Humans place more worth on the recently created,” Clint said. “You want us to change our mind.”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t want you to say anything, I’m just curious. There’s no real answer to the problem. The whole point is that it’s different for everyone. It depends on your own personal ethics.”

“Androids don’t follow ethics, we follow code,” Natasha argued. She was still doing that thing with her hand.

“Yes. It’s supposed to be that way,” Tony agreed. He was watching them both with his head tilted.  The silence stretched out. “I need a non-altered android,” Tony announced finally. “And food that isn’t pickles.”

He needed a point of comparison. The only way to know which parts of Natasha and Clint’s code were different because they were the next-gen spy-bots rather than the soldier types, or because they had made the _decision_ to be more human, was to see what standard code looked like.

“You want us to bring back an android operating on the standard protocol?” Clint asked. He sounded reluctantly impressed. Then, he mimed firing a gun at Tony’s chest and made the explosion sound.

“Yes,” Tony replied. He folded his arms. “And no. I want _us_ to go out and find an android operating on the standard protocol. It has to be a live one, I need updating feeds. And we’re going via that fancy health food place. No one ransacked that, but it was an android base for a while, so.”

“If you’re asking us to do this just because you don’t like the food…” Clint trailed off, glancing at Natasha. She ran through a complicated series of signs fast enough Tony couldn’t catch any of them.

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Natasha said, turning back to him. “Now go to sleep.”

*******

The next day, Tony emptied out his backpack and strapped on his hand device, making sure the repulsor itself was secure in the middle of his palm. Natasha and Clint had run through their own weapon checks, and were now standing by, wearing what Tony could only describe as their game faces.

Heading out with people by his side was completely different to what Tony was used to. For one, he kept having to fight the urge to turn around and check that Natasha was still beside him. For another, it made him worry that he was going to miss the whirr of an approaching android because he’d assume it was just Nat or Clint.

They did not seem to share his concerns.

It was stupid, but while they were just hanging around in his workshop, being silent and generally fairly creepy, or fetching him food like oversized and highly-weaponised cats… Tony kind of forgot that they were. Highly-weaponised, that is.

They didn’t move like any of the androids Tony had ever encountered. They were mostly silent, fluid in the way they walked. They made him look clumsy and uncoordinated, and he wasn’t literally made of metal.

Natasha managed to stick to the shadows so well it was like she was casting them. Tony lost sight of Clint more than once, only to encounter him up ahead, leaning nonchalantly against a wall. And, once, actually on the roof of an abandoned electrical store.

The health food place was deserted. Natasha came inside with him while Tony stuffed his backpack with anything that looked even vaguely edible. Sell by dates had long since failed to hold much meaning – he just lumped for anything that wasn’t visibly growing fluff.

“Too quiet,” Clint said from the doorway, where he’d been standing guard. “There’s no one around. No one will be posted here.”

“There must be some stragglers,” Natasha responded. She handed Tony a box of saltine crackers. He packed them without comment.

“We’ll just head towards the centre,” Tony shrugged. “Always something kicking off there.”

“Too crowded,” Clint responded.

“Too quiet, too crowded. Does nothing please you?”

“A better constructed plan would please me.”

“I can’t believe you’re still this annoying even on missions.”

“Boys.” Natasha interrupted them, clapping her hands. That kind of sharp sound was one even Clint could hear. “We need a straggler, Tony. An android on their own. A group would draw too much attention.”

Tony frowned, but he had to admit that Natasha had a good point. “How about the old gas station?” he suggested. “It’s on the edge of town. Already drained dry, wasn’t even in use before all this kicked off, but anyone coming from out of town wouldn’t know that.”

Natasha tilted her head, looking thoughtful. “That could work.”

Tony slung his now-full bag over his shoulder, and gestured them out of the door, where their near silent, creepy procession continued.

****

The android they found at the gas station was huge.

Like, one-and-a-half-Clint’s wide, huge. Football player huge.

“Is anyone else getting an All-American kind of vibe?” Tony wondered aloud. There really was no need to have made the thing all blonde and blue-eyed and… huge. “I feel like I’m about to hear varsity chants.”

Silence, then Natasha replied, “I don’t know what that is.”

Tony inclined his head, and did not explain.

“This one okay?” Clint asked, suddenly at Tony’s other side. Tony resolutely did not flinch.

“Perfect,” he replied. “Let’s do this.”

Natasha and Clint met one another’s eyes, had one of their silent conversations, and split up to circle around the gas station, keeping out of the glare of the lights. Tony stayed where he was, crouched low near the dirt, and waited. His repulsor was charged and ready.

The android was moving much more like the others Tony remembered. He was methodical, opening the gas canisters one at a time, searching for fuel. He came up empty each time, but there was no reaction. No growing frustration, no change in tactics. Just lift, unscrew, inspect, replace. Lift, unscrew, inspect, replace. Lift, unsc-

Natasha leapt from the side of the station, and hooked herself around the android’s legs. He reacted immediately – weapon’s engaged, twisting and firing. Natasha only just dodged out of the way, still latched on, and the shot hit the dirt by her head instead, kicking up a cloud of dust.

An arrow pierced the android’s shoulder plating, but the thing was so huge that the obstruction did nothing to inhibit its movement. He merely fired another shot at Natasha. But she’d moved again – using the distraction caused by Clint’s shot to clamp her legs around the android’s knees, and now when it twisted, it fell to the ground, off balance.

Tony had explained the night before that the best way to incapacitate an android, but leave its ‘mind’ active, would be to disconnect the wiring running from the head, to the body.

_“Tear out the neck?”_ Natasha had asked, perfectly calm.

She was reaching for it now, but the android lifted his arm and brought it down hard on her back, pinning her to his own body. The plating on this forearm was thicker, heavier, and stemmed out wider than the plating on the other side. Some kind of defensive structure – a bulletproof shield, Tony was willing to wager.

There was a horrible sound of metal-on-metal, a screeching, as Natasha struggled to get out from under the android’s press. Another arrow fired, this one piercing the plating of the android’s head. Nothing much happened.

But no- The android looked up, swatted the arrow away with his free hand, and Natasha twisted free from under the shield. She rolled onto the balls of her feet, already reaching out for the neck again, but the android on the ground moved faster, bringing his gun up to point-blank range.

Tony was on his feet before he knew it, palm raised. His shot went straight through the android’s arm, piercing the defensive metal plate, weapon, and leaving frayed wires and melted metal behind. Natasha surged upwards, and ripped out some of the plating around the android’s throat. Its body fell still, though its eyes were still alight, glowing blue.

Clint dropped down by Tony’s side, having apparently been hiding on the gas station roof. “Good shot,” he said.

Natasha stood up, and lifted a piece of the plating, which had ripped off. “Another arm,” she said.

Tony realised he was still holding his breath. He let it out. “I can fix that,” he replied. "Let's bring him in."

He lowered his hand. 


	4. Steve

It took all three of them to cart the disabled android’s body back to Tony’s workshop. Tony was pretty sure that Nat and Clint could have managed perfectly well on their own, but having something to do with his hands was keeping him from shaking too much with the adrenaline crash, so he was thankful that neither of them mentioned it.

The blonde android had yet to say a single word. Tony was running under the assumption that Natasha had torn out something to do with his vocal relays when she’d taken that big handful of wires, but he couldn’t be sure.

It doesn’t help that the android’s eyes, bright and blue and focused, had been tracking everything since he’d gone down. It made Tony feel uncomfortable – distinctly aware that this was a machine that would happily turn around and shoot them all, given half the chance.

He really, _really_ hoped that they wouldn’t give it the chance.

It, him? Pronouns were getting more and more complicated the more time he spent with Clint and Natasha, who had blurred the line so completely between machine and person that it made Tony’s head hurt the exact same amount it made his brain do a happy dance behind his eyes.

“Engineer, where shall we put him?” Natasha asked as they slid the door closed behind them. Tony felt his chest relaxing as the lock system kicked into gear again.

“Operating table,” Tony replied, gesturing to his workbench. The android’s body was stiff and uncooperative as they lay him down, and those eyes moved between the three of them with obvious, chilling, interest.

Once they’d lay him down, the three of them took a step back, and just looked.

Tony was the first to break the silence. “What have we done?” he asked the room in general. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and abruptly realised he was still wearing his gauntlet. He hastened to pull it off before he accidentally took out his foot or something.

Probably would have been an arm, with his track record.

“Too late for second thoughts,” Clint replied cheerily. He pushed at the android’s foot, watched it resettle. Natasha was inspecting the damage she had done to the thing’s neck, leaning in close and untangling a few of the wires.

“I know where I am,” the android said.

Tony jumped about a foot in the air. Natasha and Clint had their weapons up and aimed before the end of the sentence.

The android fell silent again. It did not move.

“Fantastic,” Tony said. His voice was only slightly higher-pitched than normal. “Great. Should we worry about that?”

Natasha and Clint glanced at one another, seemed to come to some kind of agreement, and then lowered their weapons.

“The internal database was damaged when the communications systems went down, but basic messages are still possible,” Natasha said. “We should be fine, unless this android sends a damage report that is received and listened to.”

“Lots of androids submit damage reports,” Clint added. Tony felt a new, weird rush of pride in his human allies, who had been out there kicking enough android ass to overload a system, apparently. “We should still resist further attempts at communication.”

“You do not want to disable me,” the android spoke again. It wasn’t a threat – more of an observation, just shy of being a question. This time, Tony didn’t jump so high. This time, he tried not to see the android as a killing machine, but a… broken version of a Natasha. Or a Clint.

“No, buddy. I want to fix you,” Tony informed it. Him. “Do you have a name?” he asked.

The android responded immediately. “Model 04-06-20. Steve.”

“Steve,” Tony nodded. He scooped up his notes about the abnormal coding he’d found in Natasha’s head, and wheeled his computer system closer. “Natasha, I think I’m going to need you, too.”

This was it. Tony untangled his wires and, carefully, placed his hands on Steve’s head. No response, no movement. He breathed a sigh of relief and began hooking him up to the monitor. A live feed of his coding began to play, and Tony scrolled through it, already enraptured.

He attached the other connection to Natasha, and split the screen so that her coding was on one side, and Steve’s on the other.

“Clint, I might need coffee,” Tony said, making the sign and lifting his gaze hopefully. Clint looked tense, clearly uncomfortable with the sight of Natasha and Tony entangled in wires that were also connected to the hostile Steve, but he nodded stiffly.

Tony settled in for a long night of studying.

*****

Half an hour in, Tony had located the damage report system, and disabled it.

Two hours in, he’d begun to figure out the ways in which Natasha’s code branched out from the basics, curving in on itself and fracturing into a thousand subsets of possible decisions, all where Steve had a simple two options, three at most.

After four hours, Tony was building a better understanding of where the ‘spybot’ coding began, and where the ‘free will experiment’ took over. Steve had commands which boiled down to ‘use brute force or fire weapon’, whereas Natasha could choose options for ‘go silently’, ‘observe’, and ‘pinpoint weak area’.

By the end of that hour, Tony was starting to forget which android was supposed to be scarier.

Clint enforced a break around hour five. He’d been getting considerably more restless as the time passed. There were only so many times you could recalibrate a weapon system, Tony assumed.

When he slept, he dreamed of green coding sliding over a dark night sky. Below, a fire pushed upwards and deleted the commands which ran closest to the horizon, and around Tony androids and humans alike began to malfunction and spit sparks.

When he woke up, he found Natasha and Clint keeping a silent watch over him and Steve both.

“I’m nearly there,” Tony promised them, because it seemed like the thing to say. And he was. He could feel it.

His mouth tasted like stale coffee and something sharp and coppery.

“You want to fix me,” Steve said, when Tony attached the wires to his head again. “Your objective is to repair.”

Tony scrolled through the readings with one hand, flipping through his notes with the other. “You got it, big guy.”

This was the point Natasha and Clint would have asked for further information, but Steve just fell silent again.

Tony went back to studying.

*****

He’d found it.

There, in Natasha’s head, an innocuous line or so of code.

Decision making.

Not spybot decisions – not ‘choose option for most effective neutralisation of enemy’, but ‘what can I learn?’

And a little further down: ‘What do I want?’

Natasha and Clint had learned how to _want_ things. Things they decided for themselves, things not programmed into them. Things that contradicted their primary programming, which they had consequently deleted.

Which they had _deleted_.

Tony set down his screen, and took a shaky breath.

“What is it?” Natasha asked, turning to look at him. “What have you found?”

Tony shook his head mutely. Then laughed. Natasha and Clint both looked concerned.

God, had they taught themselves _concern_ , too?

They were incredible. Tony might have been in shock. He couldn’t stop laughing.

“Just- you two,” he said, once he managed to get himself under control. “You’re incredible. Impossible. It would take years to craft this kind of thinking into a machine, and you just… did it.”

“You’ve found it,” Natasha realised. A small smile curved her lips upwards.

“I found it,” Tony agreed. Clint cheered.

“Reckon you can transfer it?” he asked.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t try. Maybe why I _shouldn’t_ … but can I do it? Absolutely,” Tony nodded. It was a matter of reprogramming. It would be the work of a minute, tops, to transfer the code over to Steve. “He’s going to learn in his own way,” Tony said, “your code will give him that opportunity, but the rest is up to him.”

“Are you telling us to play nice, or warning us?” Clint asked.

“Both. We need him to get a good first impression.”

Natasha and Clint assembled themselves at either side of Steve, who turned his blue eyes onto each of them in turn. Tony sat just behind his head, screen in hand, and nodded at his friends. When they nodded back, he made the transfer.

The blue light of Steve’s eyes died. A minute passed, then they flickered to life again. Tony barely noticed, too busy focusing on the new readouts he was getting. Basic, but improving with every second, running so fast he could hardly keep up.

“Welcome back, Steve,” Natasha said. Blue eyes flashed over to her. “How do you feel?”

A beat of silence. Then Steve replied, “different.”

In Tony’s hand, the inside of Steve’s head rolled over and over with new observations:

‘Natasha – android, non-hostile.

Clint – android, non-hostile.

Tony – human.

Accessing a memory: not disable, only “repair”.

Tony – engineer.’


	5. Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Now that he had the others here, Tony couldn’t remember what he used to kill time doing before._
> 
> _That was a lie. He used to spend his time making terrible decisions at fancy galas and drinking his body weight in clear alcohol. That, and developing weaponry. But now there were no fancy galas, he was lucky if ever came across a can of beer (the apocalypse was a very effective way of kicking an alcohol dependency), and he’d sort of had enough of weapons, all things considered. '_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update took me so long, I'm sorry! 
> 
> But many, many showers of thanks to those readers who found this fic and left lovely comments. This one's for you <3

Tony had never really thought about having children. Which was a good thing, considering the current state of the world. He’d always been more of a tech guy. Give him the option of holding a tiny baby or a wrench, and he would definitely lump for the latter.

He was quickly discovering, though, that the _teaching_ part of things? That was fun.

Of course, Steve hardly counted as a baby. He might be a relatively new person, but he had six inches on Tony in height, and more than that around his giant, metal chest.

He would be so easy to corrupt, though. Tony was very, _very_ aware of that, as he talked Steve through basic ethics.

Was that a super-villain kind of thing to think? Probably. Tony always seemed to feel Natasha’s eyes burning through the back of his head whenever he even _considered_ trying to tell Steve again that the polite thing to do was to greet Clint with a raised middle finger before speaking.

(It hadn’t lasted long, but it had been glorious.)

(Totally worth the payback of Clint telling Steve that he needed to keep an open pickle jar always well within Tony’s reach while he was working.)

*****

Steve’s injuries from the fight at the gas station weren’t half as bad as Natasha’s had been, when she’d first arrived. His gun was fried, but Tony hadn’t gotten around to fixing that yet.

He didn’t know when it’d happened, but somewhere he’d clearly picked up some common sense. It was unspoken, but everyone knew they were waiting to see how Steve developed with his new programming before arming him again.

There was no harm in sorting out the big hole straight through the metal plating of his arm, though. Tony couldn’t just leave it like that, half melted, the edge of some wiring exposed.

“What’s with this arm, anyway?” Tony asked Steve, inspecting the place his repulsor shot had gone through the shield-like appendage. He could fix this, but he’d need to melt down some of his scrap metal to patch it up. Not impossible, it’d only take the afternoon. “What’s it supposed to be, a battering ram?”

Steve sat patiently and let himself be examined.

“I think…” he trailed off, eyes dimming while the fans that kept his system cool kicked up a notch. A sure sign that he was probing deeper into his own code, his in-built ‘memory’. “The Norsemen Initiative,” Steve said, eyes bright again.

“Hydra sure like the mythological imagery, huh,” Tony noted.

“The Vikings were real. Not myths. You know that, don’t you?” Natasha interrupted. She was sitting on the table by Tony’s arm, and he swatted at her half-heartedly.

“Obviously,” Tony sniffed. “Don’t interrupt Steve, we’re teaching him manners and you’re a bad influence. Steve?”

Steve paused for a second, and then smiled. He lifted his damaged arm. “Shields were effective weapons. Defensive. Vikings used them to build walls, and to stop scattered attacks from landing. I am part of a group.” He paused, then corrected himself, “I was part of a group.”

Okay, so it hadn’t been as smooth a transition with Steve as it had been for Natasha and Clint. Steve was still acutely aware of having lived a _before_ and _after._ But he was embracing the after. That was good.

“Still part of a group, buddy, just a different kind,” Tony said, not unkindly, and patted a giant, metal shoulder. 

The arm was fixed by the early hours of the morning. Tony had used some of the scrap laying around the lab, all slightly different shades, which gave Steve’s arm the impression of marble, or wood; rings and swirls filling in the widest, shield part of his arm.

*****

Now that he had the others here, Tony couldn’t remember what he used to kill time doing before.

That was a lie. He used to spend his time making terrible decisions at fancy galas and drinking his body weight in clear alcohol. That, and developing weaponry. But now there were no fancy galas, he was lucky if ever came across a can of beer (the apocalypse was a very effective way of kicking an alcohol dependency), and he’d sort of had enough of weapons, all things considered.

He had a few little projects he was still working on of course – the repulsor tech was one. Tony was figuring out how to make the tech smaller, more energy efficient, so he could find a way to keep the weapon around without necessarily having to take his hand out of action in an unwieldy brace structure.

So far, he’d managed to make it so that the ‘glove’ could calibrate itself, sliding into a better fit when he pushed his hand inside. But it was still clunky to carry around.

He hunched over the workbench and gestured with a hand impatiently. Someone passed him a screwdriver, Tony shoved it between his teeth and grunted in thanks.

Steve, Natasha and Clint had been busy too. They went on supply runs, fetching back scraps of varying use. They’d also started clearing some of the heavier rubble upstairs, the remains of the Stark house. So far they’d managed to clear a path through to what remained of the bedroom. Most things were rubble and ash. But they’d found a corner that had escaped the destruction – and there, some clothes.

They’d reappeared in the workshop with a bag full of cloth. Tony had fought against the urge to get weepy over a graphic tee, but he really did feel like things might turn out okay when he was safely ensconced in a Black Sabbath shirt.

He hadn’t taken it off in three days. It was a good thing that none of the androids had strong feelings about the smell.

“Let’s run over the basic principles,” Clint suggested from his position sprawled over Tony’s cot. Steve perked up, setting down the pen he’d taken to carrying around. He liked to twirl it around his fingers, in the most human example of any of Steve’s behaviours so far. The urge to fidget.

“The basic principles. Okay,” Steve nodded.

They’d designed these themselves, sat in a loose group around the workbench when the new Steve had first woken up. Kind of a call-and-response version of the primary protocols. Tony wasn’t about to programme these into any of their heads, but it was nice to establish a moral baseline.

Clint sat up a little. “Humans are?”

“Individuals, not targets.” Steve’s reply was prompt.

“And you are?” Tony asked, setting his chin on his hand.

“An individual. A machine, but a thinking one,” Steve recited dutifully. “And therefore more than a machine.”

“And what’s our…” Clint dropped his voice dramatically lower, like a bad film trailer, “… mission objective?”

“To set free as many other androids as possible. And to make peace with humanity.”

Word-perfect. Tony nodded, and turned back to his screens.

“One question. Do I have to care about _all_ humans, or do I get a monthly murder allowance?” Steve asked, perfectly flat and neutral.

Clint stiffened. Tony ducked down a little behind his computer screen, reflexively. Steve waited patiently for an answer.

There was a beat of silence. Over by the couch, Natasha tipped her head down, like she was hiding her reaction.

It suddenly occurred to Tony that Steve might be trolling them.

He risked lifting his head to face him again and yes – there. Around the mouth. Just the tiniest hint of a smile.

“You,” Tony pointed at him accusingly. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

Steve met his gaze with bright, shiny eyes. And shrugged. Guilty. “I learned from the best,” he said.

Tony made an inarticulate noise of frustration, but he was kind of laughing too. Jesus, when were his ragtag group of malfunctioning machines going to stop surprising him? They’d found a murder bot and transformed him into a troll in under a week. “Alright, fine, so you’re an overachiever who’s learning much faster than we realised. Can you blame us for checking?”

“No,” Steve said, still smiling, though it died a little when he glanced over to Natasha. Tony imagined that had something to do with the scraped paint still down her back, from when he’d had her pinned, when they’d been trying to bring him in. From the careful way Natasha angled her body towards him – open arms, relaxed – she’d spotted it too. “Ask me the final question,” Steve demanded.

“I think you’ve proven you don’t need it,” Clint pointed out, a little huffy at having been momentarily fooled.

“Ask me.” He was still watching Nat.

“Who are we?” Clint made the gesture for the four of them.

Steve smiled. “Team,” he replied.

It wasn’t exactly what they’d taught him – or tried to, at any rate. The original answer had been ‘friends’. But this was better, somehow.

_Team._ Like they were a cohesive unit, a force to be reckoned with. _Team_ implied they had one another’s backs. _Team_ was the word for a group with a plan. A letter, then a circular motion of the hands. Tony copied the sign, catching Natasha smiling at him with one of her rare open expressions, and even Clint looked halfway to losing some snark, for once.

“Alright, show-off,” Tony sniffed, dropping his hands again. Steve still looked knowingly at him, not cowed in the slightest. Maybe creating a whole new person and then raising them surrounded solely by their weird little dynamic hadn’t been such a great idea after all. Tony recognised that stubborn look, he’d worn it himself a few hundred times.

“You need to get out more,” Tony declared. He reached for a wrench, turning back to the half-assembled repulsor tech on his workbench. “Go on. Go fly, my pretties. Bring me back shiny things.”

By unspoken agreement, the three of them filed out of the workshop, Clint patting him on the shoulder as he passed, giving Tony the space he needed to push his embarrassing emotions deep, deep down in relative peace.

******

Things really started to pick up momentum after that. Steve was a fixed part of the group now, no doubts raised. The three androids seemed to silently agree to work in shifts, either sitting with Tony or upstairs, outside, taking any opportunity to move around outside of the confined space of the workshop.

Natasha taught Steve how to sign in one easy transfer of data. Tony tried not to be jealous of that. He was getting better at it, after all, it was just that being human made him so much _slower_ than the others.

Never mind. He had his own talents. Tony wasn’t so deep into his own inadequacy pity party that he couldn’t recognise that. He was _the Engineer_ , dammit, and he was chipping away at this android problem using his slow, (still faster than most) human brain. And he was making progress.

That morning, Natasha had gone out while it was still dark, alone, and come back with a small bag of memory hardware. Clint and Steve had been hooked up to the charging port Tony had built – they didn’t need it, not really. They were able to run for decades on their power cells. But they brought Tony food and his t-shirts, so he figured it wouldn’t exactly hurt to provide in kind.

The boys were quiet and still in the corner, having a silent conversation that Tony was too sleepy to even try to interpret, when Natasha slipped back in through the door.

“You found some?” Tony asked when Nat re-entered, dragging himself up into a seated position on his couch. His hair stood in about five different directions, evidence of his tossing and turning while Natasha had been gone.

“I found some,” Natasha nodded. “A few kinds. Older models won’t have the capacity for the newer developments.”

Tony stood and flipped on the lamp by his desk. “Good thinking,” he said, and made grabby hands until Natasha upended her bag of goodies onto the table.

Memory sticks, SD cards, memory cards, external hard drives…

Jackpot.

“Will it work?” Steve asked, somehow standing right by Tony’s side, having crossed the lab without making a sound.

Definitely hanging out with Nat and Clint too much.

“Yeah. I think so,” Tony said, flipping a few through his fingers, like a cartoon pirate would dig his hands into gold. He looked up with a smile, and Clint gave him a thumbs up. This was it. Soon, they would be armed. Armed in the only way that might actually have half a chance of turning the tide in this war.

“I’m going to have to make sure I isolate only the core of the free-will code,” Tony said, holding one of the tiny cards up to the light. “Can’t just hook one of you up to every android we come across. But there should be enough storage here. More than enough.”

There was silence for a few moments as they all considered the possibilities.

“Not bad, Stark,” Clint said, swiping a memory stick from the pile and squirreling it away somewhere. “Better stop slacking.”

Tony stuck up his middle finger. But, without prompting, Steve set the water to heat for coffee, and Natasha quickly organised another visit topside, to clear more of the house. The aim was, eventually, to make getting in and out of the workshop easier to do at speed. Just in case.

Even with a pile of tiny downloadable free-wills, it wasn’t likely to be easy getting close enough to any androids they found. An escape route never hurt anyone.

*****

Tony had been alone in the workshop, working on the code for around an hour when he heard it.

He stilled, lifting his head. Gunshots? He could hear gunshots – a fight, happening right above his head. In the remains of the old house. Where the others had been working.

_His team._

Tony jumped up and threw himself across the lab so quickly he sent the stool he’d been sitting on crashing to the ground behind him. He shoved his hand into the repulsor glove, unhooking it from the system and ignoring the warning message that flashed up on the screen.

The door opened far too slowly when he mashed at the release button.

A sick feeling was rising in his throat. There was no good outcome to whatever he was about to find upstairs. Either this was an android-on-android fight, which meant that their little team activities had been spotted, and noted enough to garner a counter-attack. They could be vastly outnumbered, in that case. Steve still only had a _shield_ for Christ’s sake.

Or they could be fighting a group of humans. Humans who only knew that androids were dangerous killing machines, and who would have no problem trying to rip their wiring out. And what could any of them do in return? Tony had taught them that they weren’t allowed to hurt humans. But he hadn’t thought about what they should do if humans tried to hurt them _first._  

He took the steps two at a time, bursting out from the lab and hurling himself behind a rocky outcropping of cover. Well. It was a piece of fallen roof, but it did the job.

He looked up long enough to spot Steve crouched low a short distance in front of him, most of his body compressed to hide behind the shield.

Shots rained down around him, kicking up dust and dirt. Tony hid again before one of them could land on his face. He didn’t spot which directions they were coming from.

A noise up above him alerted him to Clint’s presence. He was crouched on the fallen staircase, shooting arrows from his arm with a determined expression on his face. Tony couldn’t see Natasha at all.

“What have we got?” Tony called up. But Clint couldn’t hear him. Obviously.

Steve could. “Hostiles. I directed Nat to go around, Clint’s up top.”

“What, they just started shooting at you?” Tony asked.

Then, an unfamiliar voice shouted, “What do you want with this place?” A human voice. Jesus.

“Stand down!” Steve replied. “We are non-hostile!”

“Yeah, and I’m eight feet tall,” was the sarcastic response. A couple of shots ricocheted from Steve’s shield. “Answer me! Why are you here? Who sent you to this place?”

“Sweetheart, I live here!” Tony interrupted. He could practically feel Natasha’s irritation at him blowing his cover.

The shots stopped.

“Tony Stark?” the voice called again, hesitant.

Now that- that was interesting. Was it? Well. Tony guessed that someone who’d chosen this particular pile of rubble to ransack might know who it had once belonged to. That was true. But why would that matter? Unless they were hoping he’d hidden a huge secret stash of food.

Man, Tony wished he’d done that.

The continued lack of shooting was probably still a good sign. Steve slowly uncurled himself from his position, and came to stand by Tony’s side instead, bodyguard style. Tony was more thankful for it than he’d ever admit to.

“That’s my name,” he finally replied, also standing, good and slow, hand still raised. “Now how about you come and introduce yourselves like _polite_ houseguests?”

“And the androids?”

“They’re friends,” Tony said. “Unless you shoot at them again.”

With that guarantee, a short man with mousy brown hair stepped out from behind a crumbling wall, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. “Didn’t realise you were still occupying the place,” he said. “I was just hoping you had a lab here that I could still salvage things from.”

Tony wasn’t focused on the explanation. He waited a beat, but no one else appeared.

“There’s only one of you?” Tony breathed instead, stunned. “All that ruckus was just _you_? Fuck. Remind me never to get on your bad side.” He thrust a hand forward. The one not wearing the repulsor glove. “Tony Stark. But, you know who I am.”

The man crossed the space quickly. “Bruce Banner,” came the reply, and a warm hand was grasping his own. It kind of drew Tony up short, a bit. When was the last time he’d actually touched another person? Too long.

And yeah, okay, ‘too long’ used to mean any time between ‘an hour’ and ‘a day’, but this time he really meant it.

There was also a vague bell ringing at the back of his mind. Banner. Banner? “The biologist?” he asked, and was rewarded with Bruce’s eyes widening slightly.

“You’ve read my papers?”

Tony waved a hand. “A few. I like to try widening my horizons. You can never know too much, that’s my motto.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clint gesturing something at Natasha, who’d reappeared from the shadows. Something that included the ‘Tony’ sign and which made Natasha cover a smile with her hand. He narrowed his eyes at them. Clint didn’t even try to look innocent.

“Ah. Well, I hope they were useful,” Bruce interjected, watching the exchange with a slightly freaked out look on his face. He was doing his best to hide it, though, so Tony reached out and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.

“Let me introduce you to the team,” he said. “This is Steve. You’ll recognise him from such thoughts as ‘why can’t I land a hit even though he’s so big?’. Then Clint – he’s the asshole with the arrows.”

“I wasn’t really trying to hit you,” Clint interrupted. “Just scare you away.”

“Oh,” Bruce replied. “Thank you?”

“If I had wanted to hit you, I wouldn’t have missed,” Clint added pleasantly.

Bruce swallowed.

“And last but not least, Nat. She’s the most terrifying of us all, don’t let her convince you otherwise.”

Natasha rolled her eyes at Tony’s comment, smiled pleasantly at Bruce, and held out her hand. “Tony is a fan of dramatics,” she said.

“I’m beginning to get that,” Bruce agreed. For all his jumpiness, his hand didn’t shake when he reached out and took Natasha’s. Tony was pretty sure she’d engineered the exchange for exactly that purpose, because once he’d touched her, Bruce’s shoulders relaxed another incremental amount.

“So, I’m afraid it’s a no from me on the lab-looting front, but you’re welcome to come and look around the clubhouse,” Tony offered. He pointed at the workshop staircase, and slung his other arm over Bruce’s shoulders. He was definitely very jumpy, but a couple of deep breaths later and he nodded.

“Yeah, yeah. Show me what you got. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TEAM TEAM TEAM TEAM TEAM


End file.
